'Blair sold his soul to the political devil,' claims Michael Howard

Wednesday 20 June 2007 20:37 BST

Of all Tony Blair's accusers, Michael Howard, the former leader of the Conservative Party, is the most quietly devastating. With a barrister's precision and self-control, he says the Prime Minister was once a good man, but he was prepared 'to sell his soul to the political devil' - by which he means the former spinner in chief, Alastair Campbell.

This Faustian pact, says Howard, led to ten years of lies and deceit, the destruction of decent government and the civil service, and the infection of public life.

Now Howard, who is tormented that he failed to hold Blair to account over Iraq, has become the chief prosecuting witness in the case against Campbell, whose memoirs will be published shortly.

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J'accuse: Former Conservative leader Michael Howard

As the Blair era draws to a close, he wants the public to understand the tremendous power the spin doctor exercised over the Prime Minister, and the malign effect it had on ministers, civil servants and the whole process of government.

Howard, 65, was demonised by Campbell, who painted him as the sinister face of the 'nasty, racist' Tory Party. But he has long been immune to such taunts. Far more important to him has been the principle at stake: the corruption of public life that Campbell oversaw.

When Howard first gave voice to these concerns in a recent TV debate, Campbell dismissed them as the delusion of a sore loser who had never reconciled himself to defeat at the last General Election.

But Howard cannot be silenced so easily. And as the Blair years draw to a close, what he has to say is more than just a barbed epitaph: it is a profoundly important insight into the true nature of the outgoing Prime Minister.

'I had many dealings with Tony Blair before he became leader of the Labour Party,' says Howard. 'He was my shadow when I was Employment Secretary and Home Secretary and he was absolutely straight. You could always rely on his word and I had a great deal of respect for him.

'But he has to bear the responsibility for the activities of Alastair Campbell, who has lied and bullied his way across our political life and done more than anyone else to lower the tone of British politics in the past ten years.

'Blair must have known. It went on for so long and it was so blatant. But Blair decided that was the price you had to pay to win elections and he was prepared to go along with it, to sell his soul to this political devil.

'One of the first things Blair did was to sign an order giving Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Alastair Campbell, his spin doctor, the power to tell civil servants what to do, which was a complete departure from all constitutional precedent.'

If that was when the rot set in, the true extent of the damage would become clear with the death of a very decent man. Campbell's control over the machinery of government culminated in the hounding of weapons expert Dr David Kelly. He was in a rage with the BBC over its Iraq coverage and Dr Kelly was collateral damage.

After Dr Kelly committed suicide in July 2003, Campbell resigned, though he maintained the timing was not related to the death.

For Howard, this presented a perfect opportunity to put Blair and Campbell on political trial. He says he'd had serious misgivings about Blair's handling of the Iraq war from the outset, and was ready to go for the jugular on the back of the publication of the Hutton report in January 2004, which investigated the events surrounding Dr Kelly's suicide.

Howard's brief had been prepared by David Cameron, then acting as his head of policy.

But when the Hutton report cleared the Government of wrongdoing, the Tories were stunned into silence.

Rather than pressing ahead with the planned attack on the Labour hierarchy, Howard was advised by Cameron and his team to avoid the whole subject of Iraq.

Only now does Howard admit this decision may have been the wrong one. When I ask him why he didn't challenge the conclusions of the Hutton report, he looks deeply troubled.

'I certainly think the Hutton report was a whitewash.'

So why didn't he say so at the time? 'I didn't feel that I could. Perhaps I was wrong. We had supported the setting up of the report . . .'

I ask if this episode was the lowest point in the Blair era, as far as he was concerned.

'There have been quite a few low points,' he says, dryly.

What he does not dispute is the extraordinary persuasive hold Blair held over the electorate for so much of his time as Prime Minister.

'I think the reason Blair dominated politics for a decade is that he is an absolutely superb actor,' says Howard. 'He is almost as good an actor as his role model Bill Clinton, of whom someone once said: "He is the only man who can cry out of one eye."

'Blair is in that league. He is a brilliant actor and when he is saying things which are not quite the truth, the thing about him is that he always means it at the time.'

This was, indeed, Blair's gift: people believed him, while they doubted everything that was said by the Conservatives. When it came to the 2005 election, this hobbled Howard's campaign from the outset.

Though he ran a thoughtful campaign, Howard did not flinch from highlighting such issues as crime and immigration. For this, he was repeatedly accused by Labour and the liberal commentariat of being nasty and racist.

Peter Hain, who is standing for the Labour deputy leadership, said Howard had led 'the most ruthlessly nasty campaign that any opposition leader had fought'. Campbell crowed that 'the Tories are flat on their backs'. Given such vitriol, it must be a bittersweet irony for Howard to observe from the sidelines as Labour ministers now fall over themselves to address the problem of unfettered immigration he had been highlighting all along.

How does he respond to such blatant hypocrisy?

'I smile,' he says, wearily. Certainly, it has taken colossal effort for the Conservatives to shake off Campbell's demonising propaganda - a painful metamorphosis, under Cameron's leadership, which traditional Tories have found particularly hard to bear.

So what does Howard make of his successor's attempts to refashion the party in his own image?

'Blair, Campbell and Peter Mandelson were able to fix in people's minds a picture of the Conservative Party - I think David Cameron is doing a brilliant job of dislodging it after ten years,' he says.

But the nagging question is surely this: If the conduct of the Government was so despicable, why would Cameron seem in thrall to a Blairite style of leadership, to the extent he would be happy to be described as the 'heir to Blair'?

Howard denies these were ever Cameron's own words (though the new Tory leader was certainly heard to make them at a private dinner), but he does concede there are some tricks to be learned from Blair.

'Since Blair was a brilliant opposition leader, there are some lessons to be learned - not from Labour policies, but from the way in which the party approached the task of winning elections,' he says.

'But Blair never understood or applied himself to the business of government. He doesn't do boring.

'He is interested in the exciting and the glamorous. But a lot of government is boring, detailed work which will never get you a headline, but which is the way to get things done.'

He believes that this fundamental flaw in Blair's political make-up explains his recent attack on the 'feral beasts' of the media. Howard describes it as 'a cry of anguish, because, despite all the time Blair lavished on the media and the fact he had made it his primary preoccupation, in the end the lack of substance told'.

So has the disputed 'heir to Blair' learned from this? Or is Cameron in danger of making the same mistakes?

The question is particularly relevant in light of the recent appointment of Andy Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World, as Cameron's chief spin doctor. This deliberate attempt to court the tabloid Press - in particular, the papers owned by Rupert Murdoch - has uncomfortable-echoes of the Campbell era. Campbell, a former Daily Mirror reporter, was specifically chosen by Tony Blair because of his knowledge of the dark arts of the bottom end of the newspaper market.

So, given Howard's hatred for the poisonous influence Campbell had on public life, what does he make of Coulson's role at the heart of the Tory Party?

'Let's wait and see,' he says, cautiously, before adding, with more effort: 'He is a very effective guy.'

The relationship between Howard and Cameron is certainly intriguing. A recent biography of the new leader by Francis Elliott and James Hanning questions whether Cameron was Howard's favourite as successor, as many had assumed at the time of the leadership election.

In particular, it records a phone call to the leading Tory George Osborne by Howard's closest adviser, Rachel Whetstone. She told Osborne that Howard was going to offer him the Shadow Chancellorship, with a condition attached. She said: 'He wants you to run, George.'

Howard declines to comment on this story but, significantly, does not deny it and has made no complaint to the authors of the book.

So why did he give Osborne the bigger job of Shadow Chancellor and Cameron the less prestigious Shadow Education brief?

'I didn't offer the Shadow Chancellorship to David because I was told he wanted to be Education Secretary,' he says. 'If I hadn't been told that, I probably would have offered him the other job.'

But surely he should have spoken to Cameron directly on such an important matter.

'I did it quickly and didn't need to talk to him directly. I was content to give him what he wanted,' he says.

What is beyond doubt is that Howard does not always see eye to eye with the new leader over certain areas of policy, in particular grammar schools.

One of Howard's most famous rebukes to Blair in the House of Commons was: 'This grammar school boy will not take lessons [on opportunities for poor children] from that public school boy.'

Could he not make the same scornful crack to Cameron?

Before agreeing to this interview, Howard had stipulated he was not going to talk about grammar schools. His self-imposed silence speaks volumes.

I ask if he can at least recommend his own experience of being a grammar school boy (he attended Llanelli Grammar and Cambridge).

'Well, it was obviously important to me, but that was a long time ago and the world has moved on. We are not going to have a wholesale return to grammar schools and I accept it is not going to happen,' he says.

Whatever his private reservations about his successor's policies, he is publicly loyal and genuinely full of goodwill towards Cameron.

'My view of politics is that the cause is greater than any individual and I acted on that by standing down. As things turned out, it looks like the right call. My ultimate reward would be if David wins the next election.'

As for his own role within the party, he is happy to take a back seat. He stands down as an MP at the next election and is relishing spending more time with his family.

He remains besotted by his wife, Sandra, a former model, and is delighted by her new success as a novelist. On Friday, his daughter Larissa is marrying her American boyfriend, Conrad Persons, and Howard will hold a reception for them at the House of Commons.

His huge contribution to public life has been undeniable, but Howard has one remaining hope: that with the Blair/Campbell era drawing to a close, we will witness the restoration of proper government.

'I would like to see sofa government consigned to the past,' he says. 'I would like to see decisions taken by committees with proper minutes. I hope David Cameron will put into place a Civil Service Act which will enshrine its independence.

'And I hope it will be possible to present the policies of the next Conservative government in a favourable, but honest way.'

I remind Howard as I leave that Campbell's memoirs will be published shortly. Perhaps they should be called The Devil's Decade.

'I do hope people won't regard them as an unimpeachable source,' he says, a bitter smile momentarily disturbing his newly mellow and equable demeanour.